There’re many web-based email service providers that you can use, but having a mailbox with your own personal domain will grant you more credibility if you are running a company, for instance, not to mention that with web-based services there are restrictions on the maximum size of the attachments that you can receive or send. In case you use an email service that supports the IMAP and POP3 email protocols, you won’t face such problems and you will be able to use any program on your PC to access your email messages, including Apple Mail, Thunderbird or Outlook. You can even set up an email account on your mobile phone. The difference between the two email protocols is that with IMAP, an email message is displayed at your end, but remains on the email server, while with POP3, the message is downloaded on your computer, unless you set up the program in such a way as to keep a copy on the server.